Counting the cost of Covid, five years on

Thursday afternoon, February 27, 2020. A group of us sat in a pub in Ballina, finalising plans for the weekend ahead. RTÉ’s ‘Other Voices’ was filming, and the town was buzzing as revellers prepared to welcome acts like David Gray, Elbow, and Denise Chaila to perform in the intimate St Michael’s Church. There was talk of a new contagious virus in Europe. We printed off the first of those now-infamous yellow signs urging caution and handwashing. As a precaution, of course. Mostly, we thought it’d be grand.

The Mary Wallopers were also on the bill, playing two packed-out venues. Local legend has it that, unable to exit T Breathnach’s bar due to the crowds, they escaped out the back window, landing in the adjacent graveyard, and were reportedly apprehended by gardaí while trying to scale the wall. It may be true, or it may not, but we know they escaped in the end. The rest of us weren’t so lucky.

That would mark the final weekend of revelry for a very long time. By the time the series made it to TV, the world had already changed forever.

March 12, 2025, marked five years since then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced Ireland’s effective shutdown from a podium in Washington, DC. Reflecting on that time is unsettling, even upsetting. Truth be told, I didn’t want to think about it or write this column. I doubt many will want to read it. Very few people want to talk about it. But perhaps we need to. How else can we heal?

Five years ago yesterday, the sun was splitting the stones. In tourism, there wasn’t much work I could do from home, but I still felt I should be doing something. That gnawing anxiety, the feeling of never doing enough, while being utterly helpless, was constant companion throughout that time, and the anxiety eventually infiltrated the rest of my life too.

At first, isolation felt like a novelty. I am naturally inclined towards being a hermit, but Covid taught me that things that feel good aren’t necessarily good for you. Over time, loneliness crept in. Realising I hadn’t touched another human in months – including my own partner – hit hard. I took to walking in the woods and, at one point, I definitely hugged a tree. (The relationship didn’t survive, but I’m happy to report the tree is still thriving.)

After months of meticulous isolation, an uninvited guest to my office brought with them a germ-laden gift. I didn’t realise it at the time, but as I sat in the car outside a funeral for a close relative (how many people experienced that heartache?) my mother in the passenger seat, Covid was percolating. This was pre-vaccine, and as I struggled to climb the stairs, the fear of having unknowingly passed it to my mother was far worse than the illness itself.

READ MORE: Westport’s Sacred Heart School scoop All-Ireland drama honours

Clearly made of stronger stuff, she was fine. It took me down though, and unable to eat, drink, sleep, or even move from the couch to visit the bathroom, I followed the US election for 36 hours straight, bizarrely watching footage that was being filmed a couple of hundred metres from my front door in Ballina. I was sick for a solid three weeks. Though my energy levels have never fully recovered, I got off lightly. Many are still grappling with Long Covid.

When people do talk, we hear a lot anecdotally about how Covid affected us. In my current job, I see firsthand the long-term impact on young people. Social anxiety, increased depression rates and school avoidance are now widely acknowledged consequences of lockdowns. At a formative stage of their lives, young people were unfairly burdened with isolation, blamed as virus carriers, and have never been properly thanked for their sacrifice.

Older people, too, were scared into submission and isolation. Many have never regained their previous social lives, their worlds permanently shrunk. We have coldly disregarded their sacrifices, too. The way the State callously abandoned older people to their fate in nursing homes remains a national disgrace. People with disabilities lived in fear of being deprioritised for care under DNR signs if they ended up in hospital – their lives effectively confirmed as less important than those of non-disabled people. That is unforgiveable.

Healthcare workers faced relentless pressure. We clapped on our doorsteps (we really did lose all our reason), but little changed. Women attended prenatal scans alone, often receiving devastating news. Disgracefully and unjustifiably, they were forced to give birth alone for far longer than necessary.

And most importantly, 10,000 people died with Covid-19, many in horrific, lonely circumstances. Families grieved alone. And conspiracy theorists to this day insult them by denying their pain and loss.

The main question we should be asking is: What have we learned? Personally and as a society?

At a government level, disappointingly little, it appears. A pandemic evaluation is underway but is not a priority. Healthcare workers endure worse conditions than ever. Have we expanded hospital capacity in case of another pandemic? Who knows? Remote and hybrid working, which had the potential to revolutionise work-life balance, are being dialled back. Accessibility improvements made during Covid have been largely abandoned. Instead of slowing down, people seem more frenetic and busier than ever.

The strangest part, though, appears to be our urgent collective desire to move on from a frightening, uncertain time in our history. It is hard to talk about it; many of us feel tightness in our chests even thinking about it. But avoidance doesn’t mean healing. Is it considered self-indulgent to admit we experienced a collective trauma? Is acknowledging the need for recovery seen as a weakness?

No one really wants to talk about it. But don’t we owe it to the people we lost, the people who grieved, the people who are still ill, the people still struggling with anxiety, depression and loneliness to acknowledge their experiences, to hold space for them and to make changes as a result? If we can’t reflect on the past, how can we ever truly move forward?